Ruwad Civil Construction Standardizes on Aconex Platform

JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA -- (Marketwired) -- Aconex Limited (ASX: ACX), provider of a leading cloud collaboration platform for the global construction industry, has signed a three-year corporate agreement with Ruwad Civil Construction (RCC) that will standardize the use of Aconex solutions across current and future RCC projects throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

The first RCC project managed on Aconex will be Jabal Omar Phase 4, a complex, multi-use development consisting of seven towers to be completed in 42 months. The built-up floor area will cover 330,000 square meters. Jabal Omar is a unique urban regeneration scheme and integrated development which will provide luxury hotel accommodations, commercial and retail spaces, car parking, and public amenities to support religious, social, and commercial activities for the Hajj and Ramadan seasons as well as other visitors year round. Phase 4 of the project is valued at 2.3 billion Saudi Arabian Riyals (SAR).

Jabal Omar Phase 4 consists of seven towers on three podiums. One of RCC's primary goals for the project is to avoid disruption of daily life in the community throughout the construction process, especially during the religious holiday seasons. The Hajj pilgrimage alone involves hundreds of thousands of people from around the world who travel through Jeddah to Makkah, just over an hour away. RCC's project logistics for Jabal Omar include traffic considerations, construction activities, storage areas, project utilities, timing of construction sequences, and additional details.

The second RCC project planned for management on Aconex will be the new Jeddah Chamber of Commerce, valued at 650 million SAR.

Streamlining Complexity for Successful Project Delivery
Syed Irfan, project control director at RCC, chose Aconex because he and his teams had successfully used the cloud collaboration platform in the past. Aconex had been proven to save time and money by streamlining communications, document control and workflows, while providing a complete project audit trail for team accountability and compliance.

"Aconex is far more all-encompassing system than any of the alternatives that we considered," said Mr. Irfan. "With schedule demands and extreme logistics due to the observance of religious holidays, we knew we had to automate and accelerate every possible aspect of this very large, complex project. The platform's document version control and search capabilities are especially critical for timely delivery of high-quality assets. Aconex makes life easy."

Competitive Cost/Benefit Analysis
Mr. Irfan and his team conducted a cost/benefit analysis of competitive solutions for managing, tracking and archiving documents. They found that Aconex not only provided a superior solution for document control, but also offered significantly broader collaboration functionality for the entire project lifecycle.

In addition to deploying the Aconex platform to manage tenders and project delivery, RCC will use Aconex Connected BIM for project-wide collaboration around building information models, Aconex Field for field inspections and issues management, and Aconex Handover for the development and handover of digital operation and maintenance (O&M) manuals at practical completion. Over the course of the project, the project team using Aconex is expected to grow to up to 350 designers, engineers, consultants, and subcontractors across different organizations in the KSA, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Egypt, and the United States.

"Many highly visible civil engineering and construction projects are being undertaken in the KSA, and Jabal Omar is a striking example," said Henry Jones, senior vice president of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Global Accounts at Aconex. "For this megaproject, construction alone is complex, requiring coordination of many different organizations over multiple phases. In addition, timing and logistics are especially challenging due to religious activities. Aconex is pleased with the opportunity to bring this extraordinary development to life, and we look forward to helping RCC deliver many more projects in the future."

About Aconex
Aconex Limited provides a leading cloud collaboration platform for the global construction industry. This platform gives owners and contractors in the construction, infrastructure, and energy and resources sectors project-wide visibility and control between the many different organizations collaborating across their projects. With more than 50,000 user organizations and over A$800 billion of project value delivered in more than 70 countries, Aconex is the industry's most widely adopted and trusted platform. Founded in 2000, Aconex has 41 offices in 22 countries around the world, including headquarters in Melbourne, Australia and San Francisco, California. The company's ordinary shares are traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) under the ticker code ACX.